As I’ve discussed before, Cameron has always done everything on her own time. Birth, rolling over, crawling, walking, she has always been on her own schedule. With that you would think that I would not be as worried she wasn’t talking when articles and milestones and said she should have, but of course I most definitely was.
We started early with reading books, flash cards, and talking to her as I read that could help get the motor skills working. While Cameron did respond at first, and was saying things like mama, dada, baba, that’s about all we were getting out of her. So we kept working at it. Describing everything around us, pointing out objects, continuing to read book after book, get more and more packs of flash cards, get puzzles, sang songs, literally everything we could think of and it seemed like nothing was helping her. Cameron just seemed to have no interest in wanting to say anything more.
She was very expressive, she was “talking” in her own language and she was communicating in other ways. Pointing at objects, leading us to things and places she wanted. So she was attempting to tell us what was going on. There was just no new words. So of course I brought my concerns to her doctor at her 18 month well check. He could see she was expressive in her own way and had her own way of communicating so he did not seem all that worried and so I tried to put my mind at ease.
I figured, like the rest of her life she would talk when she wanted, so we kept going on with working with her and trying to encourage more speech. At this point she was also not in daycare and wasn’t around a lot of children so that also made me start to wonder if that was hindering her ability to speak.
We were getting close to her 2 year wellness appointment and with every day closer and every day of her not talking I would get increasingly more worried. I started researching it there could be underlying conditions that could be causing this, diagnosis that could be given and I kept coming up short.
We went to her 2 year old appt and the new doctor did seem a little concerned, but not so much that there was a lot to be worried about. She saw that Cameron was still expressive and communicating in her own way which made her happy, but she did suggest we take Cameron to a speech therapist to hope and start to speed things up a little bit so Cameron doesn’t fall much more behind. So besides the continuing of reading, and singing, and books and puzzles and flash cards, that will be our next step in getting Cameron to talk. Now I know that I’m wishing for this and people are telling me that once she starts talking I won’t be able to get her to stop and will be wishing she would be quiet.
Did your kiddos have any issues with speech? Did you do anything special?
